It is based on utilizing the level of the vehicle's lateral acceleration, measured or estimated while cornering, to determine a criterion making it possible to evaluate the type of road profile (bendy or otherwise), doing so in order to impose various shift laws for the gears (or “variograms” in the case of a continuously variable transmission) on for example the computer of an automatic transmission, these laws then being suitable for the bendy profile of said road.
Several solutions are known for imposing various shift laws, as a function for example of the driver's style of driving, of the profile of the road (rising and falling). These solutions do not enable automatic transmissions to be suitably adapted when the road becomes bendy. Specifically, over such stretches, it would be desirable to adopt a set of shift laws making it possible to keep spare torque for the wheel (by increasing for example the engine revs), so as to aid pick-ups after each cornering, and thus avoid phenomena of ratio hunting (or of variations in ratio in the case of continuously variable transmissions) and which detract from the pleasure of driving the vehicle on bendy roads.